Oregon’s Obamacare sign-up is an ‘epic failure’

Oregon once led the country in implementing Obamacare. Now it’s just about dead last.

Not one person has yet enrolled in the Cover Oregon insurance exchange — a major embarrassment to state policymakers who early on had wholeheartedly embraced the Affordable Care Act even as other states tried their best to hinder it.

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After repeatedly delaying its website’s enrollment feature because of technical problems, exchange officials are still scrambling. Gov. John Kitzhaber announced new efforts Friday toward that goal, but mid-December is the soonest officials expect online enrollment could be available, and even that date is in doubt. Until then, the only way to sign up for coverage through the state-run program is via paper — a very long way from where Oregon had originally envisioned itself this far into open-enrollment season. The breakdown illustrates how even a gung-ho, tech-savvy state can stumble badly while attempting to expand coverage.

“I think just about everybody in Oregon is surprised and frustrated with where we are right now,” said Jesse O’Brien, a health care advocate for the Portland-based consumer advocacy group OSPIRG. “With Oregon having a reputation as a state that supports health reform and with a governor that is very enthusiastic, I think everyone was expecting we’d be in a much different position.”

“It is such an epic failure, literally it’s mind-boggling,” said state Rep. Jason Conger, a Republican from central Oregon who’s running for Sen. Jeff Merkley’s seat next year.

The state has been throwing significant resources into its backup plan, assigning hundreds of workers to deal with the paper applications, yet making little headway. Nearly 30,000 individuals and families have applied via paper, but the state hasn’t been able to finish processing even one submission. And simply trying to turn in the application itself has some people exasperated.

“Everybody’s grousing, including me, because I can’t get the damn fax machine to answer,” said state Rep. Brian Clem. The Democrat has been unsuccessfully trying to enroll his mother-in-law, who has Lou Gehrig’s disease.

About 75,000 people have enrolled in the state’s newly expanded Medicaid program but that was via a fast-track route in which the state mailed notices to food stamp recipients.

Kitzhaber announced Friday that he’s putting two experienced health executives in charge of the paper enrollment: Greg Van Pelt, retired CEO of the Providence Health System, and Oregon Health Authority Director Bruce Goldberg. Their involvement will free up Cover Oregon Director Rocky King to focus on fixing the website, Kitzhaber said. The goal is to have it repaired in time for people to sign up by Jan. 1, although the governor made no promise.

In fact, few people have much optimism that much progress will take place within the coming weeks. “I hope we get there but I don’t have a lot of confidence we’ll be there by the middle of December,” said state Rep. John Lively, a Democrat from Springfield.

The uncertainty is leading to fears that Oregonians whose plans have been canceled as of Dec. 31 will find themselves without affordable coverage when the new year begins. The state’s insurance commissioner has said insurers can reverse the cancellations if they choose — embracing the proposal President Barack Obama outlined earlier this month — but those plans can’t receive federal subsidies.

The disappointment is palpable across the state, where policymakers had been cheerleading health reform before the federal law was even passed.

As Congress was starting to draft the ACA in 2009, the Legislature created the Oregon Health Authority to promptly implement federal changes. It was among the first states to create an exchange.

Oregon then launched one of the biggest marketing pushes of any state, running folksy, feel-good ads designed especially to appeal to the many hip young people who have been drawn to this part of the Pacific Northwest.

Lawmakers are partially blaming the failures on Oracle, the main contractor that built the website. Clem, who is an IT professional, said the company should have done more testing ahead of the site’s planned launch Oct. 1.

“If two weeks from now things are still sitting somewhere and there’s not enough human beings to process them and people are freaking out,” he said, “yes, there will be a lot more anger.”